GLEN Sather said yesterday he would trade his mother to make the playoffs. Problem is, she is 96, Sather still wants her on a long-term contract, and, unlike Jamie Lundmark, she won’t bring Alexei Kovalev.

The Last Prospect of Neil Smith not only clings to the tree, but with six goals in his last eight games actually is budding. And still the new Forest Ranger, 2½ years on the job, can sometimes make himself sound like Big Lumber, the same old saw to fans begging the Rangers to develop some players at last.

Asked yesterday if this franchise has suffered for youth, Sather said: “That stuff is without saying.” And that’s part of the problem – their boss doesn’t say it often enough to satisfy the people who still think Manny Malhotra and Pavel Brendl should still be here, never mind their struggles in Dallas and Philadelphia after Sather moved them.

So the Ranger coach, GM and President for Life was asked if he really meant to say he would mortgage more of the future for a postseason berth in 2003. And this time he made no offers of surviving members of his family, not that there could be many if Sather, who drafted and developed a five-time Stanley Cup winner in Edmonton, then recycled the current Oiler playoff team, is as far past his prime as critics allege.

“I haven’t said we would trade anyone to get to the playoffs,” said Sather.

“The successful franchises have their own [nuclei], then fill in with free agents. [But] to say because Jamie was drafted by this organization you’ll never trade the guy, that’s crazy. There is nobody here untouchable.

“If you look at the record, you would probably think [the Rangers will always mortgage]. It depends who you trade. Did the guys we traded have a future?”

Ah, the $68 million payroll question for a GM who has gone for big tickets like Eric Lindros, Pavel Bure and Bobby Holik, Vladimir Malakhov and Darius Kasparaitis to buy time to dig out of a big hole.

The most damaging trades of prospects since the 1994 Cup were committed by Smith, who moved Mattias Norstrom in the 1996 deal that brought Jari Kurri, Marty McSorley and Shane Churla, then dealt his 1993 and 1994 top picks (Niklas Sundstrom and Dan Cloutier) for the fourth-overall pick in 1999 that brought Brendl.

The scant list of 1992-99 Ranger draftees playing in the NHL include Thomas Kloucek, dealt in the Mike Dunham trade, unable to crack Nashville’s top six; Malhotra and Marc Savard, who went to Calgary in the move-up to draft Lundmark five picks following Brendl.

Of the few additional 1993-99 Ranger picks who made it, Mike York (No. 6, 1997) went for a player, Tom Poti, only one year older, Kim Johnsson (No. 11, 1994) went in the Lindros deal and Dale Purinton (No. 5, 1995) still is on the team.

The one potentially back-setting Sather deal was the ninth-overall pick in 2002 for the knee-ravaged Bure, a risk Sather thought was an isolated risk worth taking for a player of unmatched goal-scoring ability.

Kovalev? The Rangers already have been there, done that. We don’t know if Lundmark’s upside is as high, only that at this stage, with Bure still out and Sather’s reputation at a low ebb following a coach-hiring disaster, he doesn’t dare trade Lundmark or Dan Blackburn for anyone older than they are.

“If Jamie keeps playing the same way he has been playing he’ll be fine,” said the GM.

So will the GM if Ranger fans are shown that, at heart, he’s a development guy.